Legislation: Land Act of 1789 (Passed)

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Mr. Speaker,

The issue of the debt, raised by the gentleman from Kentucky, is of sufficient magnitude and seriousness to merit passage of this bill for that reason alone. I would advise a second reason, greater even than the first, that the Assembly of the Union should waste no time in opening these Western lands for settlement.

This country founded her claim to independence on the proposition that all men created equal. This noble principle, to which no honest man objects, is the corner-stone on which our federal Union and the constitutions of the several States are built. The survival of a free state depends on the existence of a free and independent citizenry; and there is no measure which this Assembly may adopt, which would do more to lift up the people and provide for them the means of securing their freedom and happiness, than the resolution now before us.

In England, where land is the birthright of a gluttonous nobility, and property the holding of a few ancient families, the common people live in a state of perpetual misery and disenfranchisement unknown on this continent. This abject poverty of means necessarily translates to a pernicious political poverty, for no man who is dependent upon another to put bread on his table and wine in his cup may exercise his rights as an independent and disinterested member of the polity while this state of dependency persists. It is the experience of all nations in the long course of history, that when the people are landed and independent, there is peace, liberty and prosperity; but where they are set off their lands, and reduced to poverty and disenfranchisement, peace collapses into war, liberty to tyranny, and prosperity to scarcity. History has shown that an impoverished people are more violent, more susceptible to demagogues and agitators, and more inclined to turn to tyrants for their protection; whereas a prosperous people are immune to these temptations, and able to suppress tyranny and ambitious despots where they arise. It was not the generalships of Caesar or Sulla which first shook the Roman Republic, but the general scarcity of land which was their ultimate undoing. Independency of means, therefore, translates to liberty and prosperity among the whole people; where landless dependency inevitably begets want, demagoguery, and dictatorship.

I see in the West a new country free of the pernicious influence of rank, class, and privilege, where men are judged on their own merits, and virtue is the currency of social life. I see in the West a country where any man may by the sweat of his brow and the labor of his own hands earn his freedom with honest work. On the banks of the Ohio we will build the ridge beam of our republic; and then let any man try to shake the frame of the Union, when it rests on the stout hearts of a free and independent people.

Gentlemen, the West is our salvation and the cradle of our future prosperity. I vote that the bill proposed by the gentleman from Kentucky be passed, and recommend it to my fellow Whigs for their approval.

I yield my time to the chair.